http://the.sagepub.com/Thesis Eleven

http://the.sagepub.com/content/27/1/219.citationThe online version of this article can be found at:

 DOI: 10.1177/072551369002700115

1990 27: 219Thesis ElevenDavid Ames Curtis

Joel Kovel, In Nicaragua (London, Free Association Books, 1988)  

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:Thesis ElevenAdditional services and information for    

  http://the.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

 

http://the.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:  

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:  

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:  

What is This? 

- Jan 1, 1990Version of Record >>

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Fellow Travelling in Nicaragua

Joel Kovel, In Nicaragua(London, Free Association Books, 1988)

David Ames Curtis

The antiquarian’s interest is piqued almost immediately: Has anAmerican really attempted a Sartrian defence of a Third World

revolution in the late eighties? And given that &dquo;the logic ofnoncontradiction was never&dquo; Sartre’s, according to his biographer,Annie Cohen-SoM, which Sartre(s) has (have) been used to undertakethis effort?

Joel Kov6l, a professor of psychiatry, social theory and history atvarious American universities, is author of several books on ’’white

racism&dquo;, psychotherapy, &dquo;radical psychoanalysis&dquo;, and &dquo;’nuclear terror&dquo;.In the present volume the author recounts, in journal form

interspersed with polemical prose art fellow Americans, hisnine-week volunteer experience at the National Psychiatric Hospital(NPH) in Managua. His stated goal is to avoid &dquo;abstractions&dquo; like

&dquo;democracy, Marxism, freedom, pluralism, classes&dquo; (4), taking insteadan &dquo;existential stands&dquo; (xiv) in favour not only of the SandinistaRevolution but of the Sandinistas = the FSLN - &dquo;as those who havetaken responsibility for the revolution&dquo; (ibid.). As in previous books,his reliance on Sartre is evident.

First a few words about and American Sartrians. At myNew England high school ca. 1973, a certain teacher of EnglishLiterature, Ms C., attempted to convert her charges to Sartrianexistentialism - or, in her understanding of its literary implications:the realization that &dquo;We are aU alone&dquo;. In one of her efforts, she took

my friend Richard aside, showed him a Life picture of Sartrestanding by himself on what appeared to be an ice flow, and askedRichard if he &dquo;sometimes felt that way&dquo;.

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

220

&dquo;&dquo;You mean cold?&dquo;&dquo;, ifiquired Richard, keeping a straight face.&dquo;No, alone»~ said Ms C., earnestly and insistently.&dquo;Well, sometimes&dquo;.&dquo;Yes, I knew you did. You’re an existentialist, aren’t you?&dquo;

Now, Ms C/s to share with the world this intimate knowledgeof our- was quite anderstatidabie~ Her offSartrian philosophy was, however, doubtful From aff appeuances, shehad no idea that the philosopher of the ’’worm at the of being&dquo;who believed that we are &dquo;condemned to our freedom&dquo; also had avaried political history.

After a slow political start in a group that disbandedin 1942 Jezn-Paul Sartre began the post-war period critical of Mamsmand Communism a5 &dquo;mystiScatioms&dquo;. In 1947 he lend an electoral bidto develop a non-Coramunist &dquo;third force&dquo; in France. Unsuccessfu§

again, he drifted towzrd fellow travelling when he blamed Americanimperialism for North Korea&dquo;s 1950 invasion of the South. His~comversion&dquo; to the Stalinist PCF and his conviction that .’ananticommMnist ? a dirty rat&dquo; came in 1952 - though he never joinedthe Party. Embarrassed by the 1956 Soviet suppression of the

Hungarian Revolution, his commitment to Communism faltered. Buthe returned to the question. of m his CW~M ~DM~c~~~Reason (1960)s where he that &dquo;&dquo;Marxism is the unsurpassablephilosophy of our time&dquo; while that &dquo;there is no such thingas dialectical materialism, at toy the time being’9. ,

Around this time Sartire also im Third World revolution,not only advocating that Algerian War conscripts desert but supportinga &dquo;liberation&dquo; movement whose eventual success in establishing one-party rule has been overtly challenged recently in the (violentlysuppressed) protests of Algerian youth. He also wrote a forewordfavourable to Franz Famous advocacy of mass violence as a psychiatrictool and toured revolutionary Cuba where, in a rare display ofprescience, he told Castro that the Terror lay before him. And

teaming up with Bertrapd RmseH, Sartre morally American&dquo;genocide&dquo; in Vietnam, thus denigrating the memory of Jews and othergroups the Nazis slaughtered in the Holocaust and obscuring throughexaggeration the United States’ real mie as mass murderer in a multi-millennial lndochinese war while ignoring contemporary strategic and

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

221

political questions (i.e. how to oppose American intervention withoutchanting: &dquo;Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh/NLF is gonna win&dquo;).

Sartre also played a part in May ’68, but he had already spoiledhaving much intellectual influence over that movement as he hadaltered his basic categories of human motivation from desire in Beingand I~I®~~~e~~~~~ (1943) to scarcity and necessity in his ~ ° ° ~~9 and thisat the beginning of a decade of affluence BJ’-I1Ïth pote!!tiany radicals

implications for modem Western societies. While Ms C. was still

working out the existential problematic of sadism and masochism withher students, Sartre was discovering that &dquo;ihe Party&dquo; - which he hadconsidered mystifying, then indispensable and finally disappointing -was not monolithic worldwide. Continuing his hybrid Third Worldism,however, he became the Maoist Sartre selling La Cause du Peuple atfactory gates. Ever predisposed to blame American imperialism beforethe facts were in and ever ready to denounce heroically theRevolution9s g6~~~ss~&dquo; after it was too late, soon before his death in1980 Sartre joined his old nemesis, Raymond Aron, in trying to find6‘a boat for the Vietnamese&dquo;’, who had been sent to reeducation campsand whose economy was suffering from massive war damagecompounded by bureaucratic Communist rule.

~~i~~~ most Americans, Mr Kovel is famiiiaf with Sartre’s variousiiti~i phases. o But like many Americans, his knowledge of history,can be scanty. What we find in In Nicaragua (IN), is a mélange ofthese phases without much awareness of their internal incoherence andmutual incompatibility.

After an initial foray among the d®iiar®pri~d products of the&dquo;Diplo[mat] St®re~’ to satisfy a ch~i~t~ craving - this vignette showshis appreciation of the contradictions of the Revolution and of his roleas an intemacionalisto. - we find our intrepid explorer hot and hungry,and experiencing a Sartrian natisea - &dquo;the waves of painmwere drivinggangrenous vapour upward from my stomach&dquo; (8) ~°. wM!e attendingthe seventh annual commemoration of the 1979 repliegue, the escapeof 6,000 Nicaraguans from a Managua barrio one evening duringAnastasio Somoza Jr9s last crazed and bloody weeks of rule. Like theauthor of La Nal4s£e (1938), for whom the War and the Occupationwould soon prove a !lJrning point, Kovel is swept into the march ofhistory - or at least its reenactment - when the crowd of 60,000, 9

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

222

Daniel Ortega at its head, almost trampies his ekhausted, recliningbody and forces him to join its overnight hike to freedom.

The march resembles the Sartrian groMp-m-~ASMm:The ?’cp&gM€ had become a dr~ p~ over ~r~lThe repliegue had become road. But whose spread over severalkilometres of undulating back road. But wbose dream? It seemedas if each of us, as individuals, no longer marked as or for ®~~9v~ss... Rather was the march marching us .QO we, and the thousands ofsmall clusters of individuals, were figures conjured by the nocturnaland collective dream of the Nicaraguan revoiution. (13)

This Sartrian psychoanalytic critic of dialectical dreamscapes knows toowell, however, about Pledges and Purges, Terror andInstitutionalization. He interrogates himself:

Were we swept ~1~~~ by the &dquo;revolution&dquo;, or by the &dquo;national

leadership&dquo; who &dquo;ordered&dquo; the march, ordered the chants, put thewater trucks in our path, sent the [Soviet-bloc tanks] to pick us up?... What was the point of all this; and why was I getting so suckedinto it?

Among the chants: 6‘dJ~it~d peopie’s army/Guarantee of victory’;&dquo;Here, there¡The Yankee will di~’9s and &dquo;This power is of the

people/This power is S~ndi~ist~~ The national leadership/Orders you&dquo;.Unlike Korea, the war in Nicaragua can be traced directly to the

machinations of American imperialism and their ~gllbi’~~’~~~&dquo; surrogates,many of them former members of the Guardia ~~~a.~a~~~9 the militaryforces that propped up Somoza - ~‘®~~ son of a ~gt~h’9. Thus,reminiscent of the mid-1950s Sartre, Kovel explains with relative easethat most problems facing the Revolution are the result of the

country’s backwardness and encirclement. But his explanation makesof the Sandinista bureaucracy - about which he ~®l~~t~rily sharesseveral horror stories of inefficiency and high-handedness (37-40) -the mere consequence of these phenomena rather than the sign for theadvent of a new principle of (elis)~rg~ni~~ti®ne &dquo;The patheticNicaraguan bureaucracy and their foolish application of psychiatrictechnocracy&dquo;, he claims, are simply ‘a~i~~sy imitations of the [Western]rn~ster’9 (42). And he goes to such lengths in accusing Americanimperialism that, in granting that the CIA may not be conductingbiological warfare, he blames the US for the increased incidence ofdrunken-driving deaths (33-36)!

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

223

Like Sartre in the years before the Soviet suppression of theHungarian Revolution revealed that defence of Communism can be atricky proposition, Kovei is content t® warn against the dirty rats ofanticommunism - here: President ~~~~~d Reagan and Undersecretaryof State ~lli®tt Abrams. The minds of American citizens are &dquo;foggedby anii-Sandioista propaganda&dquo; (61), for they &dquo;~r~ accustomed to

reading about all the shortcomings of those social projects called’communist’ or ’Mandst-Leninist’ &dquo;

(54). Sure there was &dquo;the Gulagand Pol Pot&dquo; (read: concentration camps and autogenodde), hegrants, &dquo;but we should try to escape becoming the prisoners of ourreceived ideas&dquo;. &dquo;In any case&dquo;, he assures us in pure crypto-StalinistSartrian style, 6’we are in no position to make a judgment either onthe larger merits of Marxism-Leninism or on the overall tendencies ofthe Sandinista regime of ~i~~~~~~$9.

Ostensibly, IId gives the reader an outsider’s inside view of theNicaraguan Revolution, one eri~n9s &dquo;ii~~d ~ ri~~~9’ there. Donot look to this book for answers; we are indeed alone and must makea blind leap of faith over - or inie - the abyss. i~~~ei says he simplywants those who have been &dquo;raised on a diet of rigid anticommumsm[and] who ... believe that Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries are incapableof adapting and learning from experience 0.. to visit Nicaragua and seewith their own eyes things such as the convergence between the FSLNand the radical church&dquo; (47). He offers as an example an AmericanJesuit &dquo;expert in agrarian reform and social transformation&dquo; who &dquo;inthe same breath ... will t~ii you of his intimate experience withamoebic dysentery ... and the latest wrinkles in Marxist dependencytheory&dquo; (48). From mamea to Third World revolution ...

But here the Sartrian anticolonialist intervenes. indiscriminatelymixing criticisms of &dquo;bureaucracy&dquo;, &dquo;technocracy&dquo;, and &dquo;colonialism&dquo;’without defining these terms, , ~®~~i asserts that his psychiatriccolleagues at the hospital - their &dquo;technocratic stronghold&dquo; - employthe Disorder Symptoms Manual-lil and a liberal ~f drugs to

maintain their position in a revolutionary society where top &dquo;w~~~s~9- he claims, without proof or definition of ternls - are no higher thanthree times those of its poorest members. &dquo; ~ psychiatrists ofNicaragua have the classical aSHstion of those who have been

hnperialized - dependency upon what has oppressed them&dquo; (21). This

&dquo;critical attitude toward medical psychiatry&dquo; ~~~~~~.s~s are

&dquo;oppressed&dquo; when overprescribing drugs for their patients?) did not

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

224

win Kovel, friends among the perpetuators of ~i~~i~i~ at the NPH.But neither did it account &dquo;for all of the tension. A deal of itis inherent wherever there has bœn colonialism and fromthe formerly dominant power returns to be of help&dquo;, he explains (25).Shades of Fanon?

Like Sartre,, who was often ready to denounce h° if as

&dquo;bourgeois&dquo; and &dquo;European&dquo;’ (before launching ~t~ ~ doubtful defenceof some Communist party or a &dquo;liberation&dquo;’ movement), Kovel findshimself objectified: he becomes the &dquo;tIor1hamerican’? seen in the gazeof the Other. Accompanying this existential realization is a belief thatthe society from which he comes and which formed him, has littlevalue or relevance to those whom he °il soon label &dquo;the wretched ofthe ~rth~e (76). Yes, Fanon - with a Sartrian existential iltcomplex

To justify his lack of worth, Kovel engages in exaggeration-In the modem age, the notion has been that there is no point~~~~a~S~~tG~~~ ourwives. iwe are qvba± we ~11’e~ here and now~ Thiscleared the way for what has been called the scientific study ofhuman beings, one of whase outcomes has been medical psychiatry.And the sensible, efficient, rationally controlled citizen, who mawshow to live within the of capitalist society, and even likesit, became the cuäuran ideal. (20)

Thus, modem society = capitalism + manipulation + conformity -and nothing more. Kovel cannot account for ~~~~~t~~ towardautonomy, inspired precisely by life - &dquo;lived experienœ&dquo; = withinmodern society, it is only in a nebulous outside region - i~h~bit~ by&dquo;religion, which comes before the modern world-view, and r~~a®i~ti®~9which presses beyond it&dquo; ~ that 6‘th~ current consensus about humannature&dquo; is challenged. For him, then, revolution is not really amodern phenomenon! Like religion, its incidence must be the resultof a miracle (and its prolongation within a hostile modern world, hewill argue, has to be managed from the outside).

Despite the persistence of ’.oo!onialism99~ &dquo;the Revolution&dquo;’

progresses. Given the lower number of patients committed to thep~~tre~~~~ti®n~ry NPH and based upon his comparison between (a)the nature and intensity of the disorders these patients experience and(b) those of psychiatric patients he has ® r~ in the US (instead ofcomparing the former group to patients under Somoza’s rule!), hehazards that &dquo;the mad population of Nicaragua seems to be

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

225

diminishing&dquo; (34). Kovel has seen the future, and even if it does notwork, at least it is not driving people crazier.

Kovel may castigate himself for being Mat heart a tourist of therevolution&dquo; (139), but our fellow travelleR’ is not like those visitorswhom Nicaraguans label ‘6~andal~tas&dquo;. A ~’Northamerican?’intemacionalista ashamed of his objective position, he may not be ofmuch aid to the Revolution, but that is not his existential projecteither. Sartrian questions of bad faith and &dquo;engagement&dquo;’ (145) arewhat brought this author to situate himself in Nicaragua. He craveslived experience, a chance to test his existential choice in favour of theRevolution and its leaders.

Kovel gets this chance when he hitches a ride on a military planebound for the Atlantic coast town of Puerto ~.~.°.~~zas. Havingpresented himself to the FSLN as a trustworthy radical journalistinterested in examining reports about Sandinista mistreatment ofMiskito Indians, he is irked when a Mend complains that he hassecured his hard-to-obtain transportation through inside bureaucraticchannels. What he will retrospectively label his &dquo;~~rst World pride&dquo;(149) swclls as he is introduced at am Indian high-school graduationceremony as a g MNorthamericaJl1~~~ not a bad Yankee. His crisisof faith occurs when Diego, the righttwatchman at his governmentlodging, launches into an unexpected tirade against the San4inistas,their army, their repression, their responsibility for the disastrous stateof the economy and for the deaths of many in the native population.

Taken aback, Kovel retreats to his bungalow without saying aword to poor Diego, for this apparent crypto-eoatm was &dquo;very likelya victim of the vicious disinformation campaign&dquo; (139). Nevertheless,these criticisms had stung deeply. Thus having left Diego to stew inhis anger, Kovel finds that &dquo;there was no one to debate with save

mysclf&dquo; (ibid.). And so Kovel composes at this critical juncture in hisrevolutionary travel journal a &dquo;Tcstameni&dquo; - neither the Old nor theNew one but his own - to his existential faith in the Revolution.

In Sartrian style - and unaware of his quite modem

presuppositions - Kovel contrasts the inauthentic &dquo;level of object&dquo;with the &dquo;possibility of a sincere existence&dquo; offered by the Revolutionon the &dquo;level of subject&dquo;. He denounces all attachment to an egoisticself, arguing that giving &dquo;one’s self to the revolution ... is the onedistinct superiority of the revolution over the counter-rcvolutioz~&dquo; (150-

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

226

151). Like Sartre in Cuba, Kovel admits that &dquo;the FSLN wiu probablyfail in the long ma&dquo; (152); yet, he still offers his &dquo;’critical

participation&dquo; (157) for the Sandmis~9 ef~!’t§, aware that Sartrianserialization (&dquo;doing all of ihifigs vYhich are far removed thepure center of revolutionary transcendence&dquo;) and &dquo;the

institutiona!izat:on of violence&dquo; (154) are ever-present possibilities (forwhose avoidance he offers no guidelines, not e-ven proBfisioJ!1!f’AI ones).&dquo;7here is no way Nicaragua would ever approach perfection&dquo;&dquo; (152), heirrelevantly remarks.

We are in the mists of Sartre’s CW~~~. The &dquo;standards

complaint&dquo;, he acknowledges, is that &dquo;the Sandinista revolution is

Mandst&dquo;, but so what? Having left &dquo;Diego, Elliott andRonald Reagan&dquo;&dquo; (146) far behind, Kovel, still ashamed of himself,asserts that &dquo;there is no reason to be of this&dquo;’ allegation oreven to try to &dquo;explain it away&dquo;.

Be-cause they are Marxists for the very sensible reason that one doesnot define oneself in opposition to the power of the Yankee andbecome a historical subject unless one assumes the position of thephilosophy of revolution. And Marxism happeas to be the philosophyof revolution wherever revolution occurs in a land controlled bycapitalism. (153)

Little matter that dialectical materialism does not exist if Marxism is

unsurpassable, and apparently no need to inquire what &dquo;philosophy ofrevolution&dquo; might be operative where US imperialism has beenoverthrown and supplanted by a movement that is tending, as he willsay, toward centralized bureaucratic rule.

But it is at this point that Kovel&dquo;s Sartrian defence of the FSLNbreaks down. Problems had already arisen when, for lack of a Simonede Beauvoir, Kovel finds arguing the case for the priorities ofthe Second Sex (83=116). The Sandinistas raised the issue of abortionrights, he notes, but then &dquo;put the brakes on because ... ~e can’t gettoo far in front of the people’

°’

(111) after the resulting controversybecame &dquo;a godsend for the Right&dquo; (113). Nevertheless, Barricada is

given &dquo;credit ... for responding, and showing that a pasly-sponsoiedpress can be genuinely open to the will of the people&dquo; (who werebehind this self-appointed vanguard, right?). Moreover, the right-winganti-abortion newspaper, La Prensa, happily &dquo;got what it deserved&dquo;

(116) when the government shut it down!

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

227

Nor is Kovel the late Sartre, who would hardly have denigratedfreedom as an &dquo;abstraction&dquo;. And he iacks Sartre’s knack for

(somewhat) plausibly ieducing a life to one existential choice: e.g. hisown to be a writer or Jean Genet’s to be a thief. ~®~~~’s

psychoanalytic interpretations of his patients (A‘9~--~~ are fairlyunenlightening reciialions of the fact that the psyche exists in societyand that therefore society influences it.

These drawbacks become evident in the Testament. Not onlydoes Kovel fail to f~l~I the di~~ult role of Sartre’s feminist

companion, he also adopts the rhetoric of Sartre’s structuralist andpostst~cturalist intellectuals adversaries:

For the ~ate i® ’ t~ from the First World, the self to be givenup is the prideful self, the aU-~ing ethnocentric White man’sEgo. (148)

&dquo;Ethnocentrism&dquo;, a word of Western origin, has become a postmodernWestern no-no, but let us rellect that the non-Western, Third WorldChinese who recently cattle-prodded African student guests in theformer &dquo;Middle l~n~d.®~9’ have given Birmingham, ~aba~a9s P®li~Chief, Eugene 66~~1~~~ Com10i’9 some faii- competition in the contest forracist infamy. And:

If the fevolutkm means anything - to whoever participates in it [i.e°eforget about Diego - f9AC] -~ it means a radical deœntering in whichthe notion of exchange simply breaks down. . (149)

A lay religious activist, however, was h~~~,d for giving ~’the impressionof havingput himself ~~e ® of being of a pieœ~ inside and outside,lucidly and consciously&dquo; (53). And:

The Nicaraguan revolution can help free us from the prison-house ofthe self. (156)

Need I cite the sources for these decidedly non-Sartrian pastiches?(N.B.: Sartre’s critique of the Ego was philosophical, not ~~ltural.)

The most glaring departure from Sartre’s philosophy is Kovel’sadoption of the Church of the Poor. Never mind the contradictionbetween a 6‘radi~l deœnteJring~~ and the f~lly integrated Christian, orthat between these spiritual self-made men who proclaim that religionand revolution are compatible and the Christian concept of a divinecreation. How can the non-Christian Kovel combine a grass-rootsCatholicism inspired by &dquo;liberation theology&dquo; with Marxist-Leninist

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

228

practice within the framework of Sartre’s atheistic ex6tentiaUsm? Hecannot’.

Here a tm!y §&aft!mg meaning adheres to NiœrnguS1. This wrq,,tdiedlypoor nation, as &dquo;Marxisi-Lsmoisf, by thefashionable ceitiers of the world and bied diy by the [six] sU~!1pûWe!r’,is to many of its O~ people - and tü pwple eL-zwhe-re, too -nothing else than a contemporary wœrnatioo of m the Cross.The contrast the spmtuaii of people one sees inNicaragua and the power structure -- kt us say it,. the andPontius Pi!ates - of the Reagan administration brings the myth tolife. (156-157)

But then Rosa Luxemburg, frustrated with wartime Social Democrats,spoke of the pmietamfs &dquo;Colgotha&dquo;. Maybe those Christians willunderstand if one speaking their language?

In a similar vein Kovel holds up as an example a former KoreanWar veteran and Republican booinessman from Idaho who has becomean M~~~c~~&~. Others are praised as 4’prog:r~ive religiousNorthamericam&dquo; (65) in a rhezoric that is now often accompanied bya denunciation of bourgeois and Western notions of &dquo;progress&dquo;.

Has this Sartrian fellow traveller become totally disorienled?Cooped up in his goverrimerit rooni, Kovei aM the key Sartrianphrases - °’the party’, &dquo;the revolution’B &dquo;astonishing presence&dquo;,&dquo;transcendence&dquo;, etc. ~ when he returns to &dquo;the question of the FSLNin power&dquo;. But the Fi~eudo-Manda-n rhetoric he employs hereresembles iii its implausibility the arguments by theimprisoned protagonist in Arthm Koestier’s bad anti-Stalinist novel,D~?~~~ at Noon. Kovel-

It now seemed to me that the party belonged to the zone of

necessity, and that it played the same role toward the revolution asa parent did toward a newborn child. A rcvolutlon is far more thanthe government of its society; but it needs that government, and therevolutionary party has to understand, express and meet that need.From another angle, the party has to mediate between the astonishingpresence of this newborn particle of transcendence, and the

historically made world which both this renewal and woulddestroy it. The party is the guardian of the revolution; it is not therevolution itself. The party’s job is to see that the revolution survives,and then to efface itself. (152)

This from someone who just denounced &dquo;the great Father Figure inWashington&dquo; (142) in order to the question: &dquo;How can people

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

229

be true brothers and sisters when the jealous Father remains in~~a~~~d°~s9 (151). It is not just that his Testament begs afl the issues,Of that it contradicts itself when it envisions the successful witheringaway of a party that ’%4li probably fail in tlte long nm&dquo;. This grown-up psychiatrist and social theorist has left History hanging upon ajudgment that this particular &dquo;~’~t~~r&dquo; ~ ~~d &dquo;giving&dquo; (147 ff.)rather than Jealoœ. And his defence of the FSLN asks us to view the

Nicaraguan people - the proponents as well ~ beneficiaries of thisrevolution - as childre~. Is this defence simply paternalistic, then, oritself infantile?

Kovel, like Sartre before him, knows quite well that people onthe Left may disagree about the &dquo;leading party&dquo; and the course of arevolution. It is just that he dismisses all this as a &dquo;ritualistic attack

upon the Sandinistas&dquo; (154), no doubt due to the overwhelmingpropaganda one receives in &dquo;the United States ... the counter-

revolutionary - society par excellence&dquo; (140). (Yet eight years of

Reagan’s Sandinista obsession was countered by enough publicresistance in this most &dquo;comter-revoMoM!y&dquo; of societies to preventan American invasion and to force Secrete of State George Shultz top~~~~~dle the ~~lt~~ of Bnmd for contra ~~ds.~

in fact, based upok, Kovers visit &dquo;in Nk,aragua9’ one can makesome judgments. While speaking of the Poopie9s Church and its &dquo;’true

voi~&dquo;, El Tayacan, he denies that

democracy in Nicaragua is a force ... great rmmœrs of Nicaraguans... participate actively and directly in ... open town meetings in whichthe demands of one sector of the population or another are madeknown. Perhaps these Nitcaxaguans are deluded, but they act as iftheir voice makes a difference in the future of their country - andthey are encouraged to do so by the government. (71)

This &dquo;radical Chr~st~~~9’ journal also encourages its readers in thisdirection when, using Exodus, it states that &dquo;God likes democracy.He took them out of slavery so that they could make t~~~s~l~r~s intoa free and conscious people who would participate in collective

decisions&dquo;. Be that as it may, El ~&dquo;~y~~;~~ offers some interestingproposals for drafting the 1986 Constitution:

That there be a bicameral legislature with a permanent C~billr~a

abierto, or open to~ meeting, count~ to the National

Assembly. The latter would embody representative democracy andbe composed of elected representatives chosen by the political party;

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

230

while the former would embody direct demœracy~ and ronsist ofdelegates of the various orgamzatioas- (72)

Kovel himself concludes from this tbat &dquo;the Church of the Poorconcentrates within itself all [~j the anatchistic tendencies of therevolution and opposes the or centramng tradition and that,as such, it is &dquo;the of the sevolutim&dquo; (ibid.).

But look against the Tayacan proposals. Kovel that&dquo;the relations the two of are left Mmtated,though the impression is that the cabildb wonid be a placewhere the immediate voice of the p-eople be heard, makingdeaiands upon, but act necessarily oveITUling la system ofj electedrepresentatives&dquo;’ Kovel denounces when it is applied in the States.Quite clearly, these &dquo;anarciiistic&dquo;’ (!?) forms are pushing for somepower under Sandinista rule and, just as clearly, ahey have atthe start (or failed to state) the key that popular powershould emanate from the bottom up and not serve as a niere check -a necessarily ineffectual one - upon separate authorities who not onlycall the shots but command the material and organizational means todo so. If this situation the of Nicaragua politics,those &dquo;statist or centralizing&dquo; forces -will not encounter much organizedresistance and the goal of &dquo;free and comdou~ coUective decision

making about the fate of Nicaraguan society win have been abandoned.(I say &dquo;Ij°’, for modem society also movements for autonomyand Kovel has not examined &dquo;all&dquo;’ the coMnt~y’s oppositiomi forces.)

A few later Kovel considem peopie’s potential for resistanceto centralization when a priest, sent by the Church hierarchy to preachat a base community meeting, argues-

Human mstttudoos ... need guidance; in fact, they need a singlecentralized authority, embodied in a leader. What wouid school be

like, he asked the children, if there were nc teacher? ’~l7vexybndywou~d go home&dquo;, replied a child to general laughter, but the priestwas not to be distracted. And what wo~l£ a factc>~ be mœ if therewas no director’? &dquo;It would be robbed&dquo;, said another child. No, saidthe priest, there would be no production. (80)

Exp4aining the adults’ failure to challenge the priest in of theirinternalization of social repression - they were &dquo;too respectful tospeak back&dquo; - Kovel hypothesizes that, &dquo;if they could say what theyfelt, they would have answered, &dquo;socialism!&dquo; to the priest’s inquiry intowhat would happen if the factory director should be absent&dquo; (81).

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

231

This conclusion is overly optimistic. Sccialism - w worker’s

management of the workplace and popular grass-roots direction ofsociety - is not immediately intuitable, nor is it stifiled merely byrepression of &dquo;feeling&dquo;. It is an ongoing social and historical projectinvolving an autonomous individual and collective exercise of will andreflection - &dquo;free and conscious&dquo; social action. New psychic structurestoo must so that people can invent and this projectin such a way that it answers to, but also can continue to challenge,their &dquo;lived experienced The Catholic &dquo;fifth column [1st]&dquo; (80) endedhis talk with an appeal that the parents present encourage their sonsto become priests (controlled by the Church hierarchy). Let us hopethat the Nicaraguan people can learn to further their revolution insuch a way that they act as adults ruled by no so-called Father Figures- whether divine, ecclesiastical, familial or partisan.

Is that just a pious wish? Kovel wants to relate to us theconcrete contradictions of this revolution, as seen close-up on groundlevel. But it is not clear for whom this mixture of Sartrianexistentialism and praise for regular-guy &dquo;NoFthamencams&dquo; turned

progressive M~~s~cM?~~&~~~ is intended. Kovel has nothing to say toDiego (though he turning him in to the authorities!), andno reply in the Epilogue to an American businessman flying back withhim to the States from El Salvador when this man says: &dquo;But they’recommunists, aren&dquo;t they?&dquo; (181). If IN provide any concreteresponse to the problem of how to expand existing individual andorganizational efforts toward direct democracy from the grass-roots andthe shop-floor levels on up to the centers of decision-making, then thisbook will have been written in vain. And at worst it wi~ have beena prelude to a return visit, during which he will attempt to treat theNicaraguan people for the psychic trauma of having a &dquo;good parent&dquo;go bad.

POSTSCRIPT (FIRST DAY OF SPRING 1990):More than a year has passed since I orginally, and in vain, submittedthis review article ― at its request - to a British psychoanalytic journalwhose Editorial Board, it turns out, includes Mr Kovel. And freeelections have come to Nicaragua. I stand behind what I have written,and I hope that it will be of use to those of us on the Left, who aretrying to comprehend what happened last month with the FSLN’s

crushing electoral defeat.

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

232

All along, any &dquo;iailings, errors, or the Sandinistas

&dquo;might&dquo; have committed were explained by the a’progressive-mindednin of &dquo;backwardness’’&dquo; and the nth ofarguments used. to &dquo;’defend&dquo; socialism in me oo111g of its glorious longmarch toward victory. We are once more being with&dquo;American imperialism&dquo; and &dquo;economic M the twin reasonsfor the oppesitMm’s unexpected victofjfo Such it seems, can evenbe with of &dquo;Blaming the Victim&dquo;. Kovei himselfhad said:

Mostly, I think, the strain of their life makes many Nicaraguans torpidand inefficient ... Of all the m~mœrles! problems of Nicaragua, thisslackness among the population caused the most grief to thoughtfulpeople. I have seen some dose to tears as they discussed it Whatthe contra does to interfere with production, or what the blockadedoes to deny the economy parts, Nicaragua greatity. ButI doubt that it exceeds the oomage from poor productivity. (37)

Kovel these &dquo;ihoughtkl people&dquo; and their at shiftlessnessthe producing without the hint that perhaps theSandinista poiiiico-econoxnic had the conservative adage:&dquo;a fair day’s wage for a f~ir day’s w3rk&dquo;’, not with the motto:

99 abolition of wage slavery&dquo;, but with a situation in whichworkers adopted a variation on the Eastern European theme: &dquo;You

pretend as if you are paying me9 I°11 pretend as if I am working&dquo;.What I did not understand, however~ was that, even with secret

ballots and an alternative choice, the FSLN would lose the electionlast month. That is, not until I rozd Paii Berman’s essay,&dquo;’Double Reality: People’s Revolution Versus Sandinista Revolution&dquo;,in the December 5, 1989 issue of the (New York) M~agig PMc~ 1When he talked to people in Nicaragua, BemaB found that a majorityvoiced opposition to the Sandinistas. The &dquo;People’s Church&dquo;’, it turnedout, made its more through outside hype (like Ebvers) thanthrough any indigenous support it might once have had. Not only wasthere a dirty US-sponsored contra war (the Contras, short on bullets,rounded up members of one outlying cooperative and cut their headsoff with machetes, the New York Times reported), but werethe unpopular policies the Sandinistas devised to combat it (militarydraft, forced removal of native populations, massive diversion of

resources to the largest military force in Central America,&dquo;community&dquo; surveillance of the population and some

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from

233

Hdisappearanœs&dquo;), And not only was there a backward economyinherited from the time of the Somozas (who controlled 20 per rentof the economy in 1979 and had pocketed earthquake relief f~a~ds backin 1972), there were, not simply economic &dquo;mistakes&dquo;, but a massivedestruction of existing economic arrangements (Berman discusses atlength the integration of the shoemake7s’ cooperative of Mosaya intothe Sandinislas° huooern s1aie-con1roVed system, to the eventual ruinof these small-smie artisans) with nothing better put in their place(production, nationwide, d~i~dl~ to 1950 l~~~ls~. Indeed, whatreplaced the ~rr~pt Somoza economy ways 2 t~~~~a~lar, state-party-army-police-distribution monopoly-&dquo;mam organizations&dquo; system in

which ple could be 5huu!ed from one Sandinista &dquo;ralDyee to the

next, with those who refused to attend or to cheer loud enough losingtheir jobs and their ~~i~~~al) security. No wonder that, once givenan opportunity and despite everything people had reported to the&dquo;scientific’? pollsters, an absolute majority voted against this system afew days after a mass rally in which huge numbers of the nation’spopulation were bused into a Managua repainted for the occasion inred-and-biack - the Sandinista’s (and ~~y high sch~l9s~ colours - atmassive cost to this country now less productive than Haiti.

We will be told, with threats of ~ntr~ revenge brought to ~i~~.9that the &dquo;progressive&dquo; thing to do is to continue to support the FSLN,that the FSLN needs to retain ~~~r®1 of the Defense and Interiorministries (Engels’ &dquo;groups of armed ~~~9’~9 and that 66th~ people&dquo; io4llagain rally to the Sandimstas when the &dquo;~a~~v9 of the Revolution areput into jeopardy. Will anyone on the Left, in the momentous yearof 1990, suspect that there might be other ways of conceiving andejecting social change buy means of the state~party-army-poliœ?Will they come to understand that the aim of freedom and humanautonomy, beyond the n®mi~~ mechanism dear to Marxistexplanations of ple’s behaviour, can me an effectivemotivation? I~are we even imagine that, once rid of the Sandinistas’hold over state power, other alternatives, more participatory andlasting than just voting one Sunday against the FSLN, could open up?

NOTE1. Mr Berman, an acute if eclectic anarcho-social democrat, informs me that

he made it onto Mr Kovel’s list of the most damaging anti-Communists inAmerica, along with Joseph McCarthy. [See now Berman’s post-electionpiece, "Why the Sandinistas Lost" in Dissent (Summer 1990).]

at La Trobe University on September 19, 2012the.sagepub.comDownloaded from